Question? anyone who can help

[Teresa Edgerton]

Oh I totally disagree, Thunderchild, that fantasy is all about style and science fiction is all about substance. A well-written fantasy reflects inner realities which are no less valid for being intangible.

It's true that a reader can enjoy a book like The Lord of the Rings, or A Wizard of Earthsea, solely for it's imaginative qualities, but there is also something more powerful at work that some people respond to as well.

Just as well-written science fiction rises above the gadgets and scientific theories to deal with more human matters, such as our hopes and fears about the future.

[Quokka]

I really like the analogy with the ph meter. A story like Clive Barker's Imajica is a fantasy even though its woven into the modern world. One thing I was thinking (though thats a bad start) is that Science fiction will usually take the 'Laws of Science' as we understand them at the time (including theories) and try to stretch and play with them in order to create the setting and interaction that the author desires.

Fantasy on the other hand recreates the 'Laws of Science' in his world to act the way he wants. Ie. Most of the time the magic will be explained as acting in accordance to the physical laws of that environment.

Hmmm, clear as mud? maybe i need to think about this some more

[Sibeling]

I usually distinguish sci-fi and fantasy like that:

If there is magic, dragons, wizards, big gloomy woods and nothing is radioactive - that's fantasy. And in some fantasy books you get maps.

If there are spaceships, aliens, lots of odd planets and robots - that's sci-fi.

In other words, fantasy is about magic, sci-fi is about technology (I think this idea has been mentioned before, but never mind )

[zorcarepublic]

erm...no



For instance, IIRC there is a book that has a footnote in TSOD, where TP describes a book that, in his view, is sci-fi without having ANY technology more advanced than a bow. Its really your own POV, and I feel that SF is usually concerned with the human condition--how we would be 100, 500 or 1000 years into the future. Fantasy is like SF, but doesn't explore the human condition as much. Star Wars is SF, in a way--its core issue, and correct me if Im wrong on this, is the battle between good and evil. So is B5, and Star Trek. Im probably wrong (in fact, I most likely will be wrong) but its my POV

[aurelio]

I always thought Fantasy was anything that involves the extraordinary, and that Science Fiction was simply a subset of the broader catagory of Fantasy.

You have things like Sword & Sorcery, Speculative Fiction, and now a lot of Alternate Histories, and those too seem like subsets of Fantasy, similar to Scifi.

[Winters_Sorrow]

I try not to categorise stuff
I don't know who first said it, but I remember a line "when you can name something, you limit it"

sounds like fortune cookie philosophy, I know but I like it

[Stormflame]

When I think of Sci-fi, I think of works like Dune and Star Wars and other novels that thrive in the threshold of futuristic worlds. Fantasy draws to mind books like Eddings, Tolkein, other such authors. These are worlds neither futuristic or scientific, but, a fairy tale setting where science is nothing more than a wizards cauldron and old manuals on the desk of an alchemist.